


A Series

by catinthedark



Category: Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald
Genre: Character Study, F/F, Poetry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-04
Updated: 2013-10-04
Packaged: 2017-12-28 08:51:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 640
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/990098
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/catinthedark/pseuds/catinthedark
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jordan reflects on her life and relationships. </p><p>(Set several years after the end of the novel.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Series

i

I am no Sappho  
whose immortal words command infinities.  
Nor was Daisy,  
and yet I clung to every one of those words she’d release,  
falling like coins through water from shining lips.  
On my skin: electricity,  
an entire city lit up beneath my veins.

(She was forgiven the moment Tom’s girl hit the bonnet of Gatsby’s car,  
but I left New York as soon as I could  
see my breath on the morning air.)

 

ii

Stars were for the girl  
knees painted purple black blue  
red and white  
blood skin and dirt.  
Flowers in her torch-bright curls   
she slept beneath the old oak tree  
sky-eyed and watching stars till  
she found herself  
lying amongst flaming yellow leaves  
hair blending in with the dirt.

Now she’s older, hard-edged. A modern woman  
as I stand now beneath the city.  
The girl next to me glitters  
nearly as brightly as the lights surrounding us;  
our fingers, barely touching  
to complete a delicate circuit.  
Paris: strands of light, necklaces of pearls.  
Strings of brilliant lovers,  
golden chains.  
Gold, for her voice,  
the light on her hair in the summer sun  
lying entwined like twentieth century Aphrodites  
floating in the drawing room.

Sometimes I watch the sky now  
but the yellow street lamps as they flood the city with light  
drown the stars as easily,  
only echoes in the sky  
where the Seven Sisters should burn unfading.

 

iii

I immerse myself in the people around me,  
in whichever cities  
I find myself.  
I was never lost, only buried,  
but memories are heavy, hard to shift,  
the ghosts and their ghastly hands surely heavier  
than any burden on Atlas’ back.

A thought (uncharacteristic, never to be spoken aloud):  
who am I, if not the girl  
whose mother wreathed her hair in flowers  
on the longest days of June?  
But that girl has to have died (in some way)  
along with that mother,  
and again, every time I leave,  
moving into orbit around another brighter star.  
This girl beside me, she’ll go too, or I will,  
and she’ll join the constellations  
in clouds of stars gathering behind me,  
one thousand glowing phantoms built only for haunting me,  
to pull inevitably to the past.  
Escape would be easier  
if their stories weren’t as much a part of me as my own.

 

iv

Now, concentrate:  
I can smell the roses beside us.  
The glint of her whisper against my ear tastes like being hidden  
and I hear the echo of shadowy marks on her skin.  
Her hands are white-gloved,  
a golden bracelet dripping over one wrist,  
grasping for me now.  
If I can see scarlet and vermilion  
slick and sticky on her fingertips--  
I don't seem to notice,  
but she left, overnight  
without a trace.

I can feel her dancing now  
pulling me through bodies  
swaying, burning up with the heat of each other.  
And I can still see her the day she walked away from me.  
Unsteady in her wedding dress,  
bruising pearls around her neck,  
something disintegrating behind us,  
lying with the grey snowflakes of a letter in the soap dish.

Another pair of hands  
pulling at me now:  
slightly damaged, with age, with the sun,  
they’re holding flowers like the most precious of jewels.  
Laughter changes to coughing too often,  
and they fade cold.  
Rotting flesh below ground now  
but I can feel her skeleton’s fingers tangling in my hair.

Too many ghosts to count, but these cling tightest.

 

v

I am, I was, she is, she was.  
We are,  
then we were and that means we aren’t.  
To be (the verb)  
is built for changes, endings.  
I am not.  
It plans for the shadows and the ghosts--  
our only certain companionship.  
I cannot:  
my small boat, plunging and swirling in drifts of time  
will never be able to fight the passage of the ages.

**Author's Note:**

> I used imagery from Fitzgerald's text, and from Sappho as well, though I can't remember how much survived till the final draft (the last stanza, I think, is the only place where it's really obvious).


End file.
